On the face of it, Derry ought to be one of the counties most jazzed about the new kick-out rule. Some teams are having to shift around their personnel to suit it and give battlefield promotions to midfielders whose size demands their inclusion rather than their skill. By contrast, Derry already had two All-Star midfielders in the shape of Conor Glass and Brendan Rodgers and can now throw the imposing figure of Anton Tohill into the mix.
Yet on Saturday night, it was Dublin’s complete domination of the Derry kick-out that turned the game the home side’s way. After a quarter of an hour, Derry led 0-6 to 0-3. Dublin outscored them from there to the break by 1-7 to 0-0. Dessie Farrell’s side thoroughly ransacked Neil McNicholl’s kick-out in that period, sourcing 1-4 of their scores from it. For good measure, they put up the first point of the second half off his first kick-out after the restart.
That was the game, basically. Derry went half an hour without scoring, conceding 1-10 along the way and coughing up 1-5 directly from their own kick-out. That’s never going to get it done for any team but it’s especially debilitating for a side like Derry, who would like to think they have the jump on most teams in that area.
Afterwards, Paddy Tally didn’t put a tooth in it. Asked if there was any science or tactics to the way the kick-out is now, he more or less threw his hands in the air in response.
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“There is some of it, but sometimes it just comes down to really good individual play. I thought Brian Howard tonight was outstanding in the middle for Dublin, he seemed to boss the kick-out. I thought Anton did really well for us. Anton, I think, won six, maybe seven clean kick-outs out there, so he was very good. But Brian Howard maybe dominated from the Dublin point of view.
“Also Dublin won on the break ball, but they’re very strong on that. I think that’s what disappointed us tonight. Now, in fairness, Niall Toner and Ciarán McFaul were two of our better break-ball winners in the last few matches, and both were off injured. I think we didn’t really adjust as well after that.
“Science-wise, the ball is going to go out to the middle now. It’s really going down to back to midfielders who can win ball. There are certain things you can work on but really the players have to take a lot of responsibility for themselves when they’re in there. It’s really fighting hard to get it sometimes and it’s just who wants it most.”
Tally is a thoughtful coach in general, and his team had just taken a hiding so it’s not really fair to hold his take up to too harsh a light here. But declaring that kick-outs are going to come down to who wants it most feels like a bit of a cop-out and it’s hard to imagine its something Tally really believes. Certainly come summer it will be a shock if Derry, of all teams, don’t come peddling something more sophisticated.
A hint of what might evolve over time was on show in the Armagh v Mayo game earlier on Saturday at the Athletic Grounds. Ethan Rafferty went long into traffic at times and Colm Reape did the same. But both goalkeepers found some variation too. Reape had some success finding Enda Hession with short kick-outs to the edge of the arc, although it helps when Hession has the pace to get past his man and get Mayo moving up the pitch.
It was a couple of Rafferty’s kick-outs in the second half that really caught the eye though. With Armagh under the pump and Mayo starting to get motoring on the back of Davitt Neary and Ryan O’Donoghue’s energy, Rafferty twice put the ball down and waved everyone over to the left-hand side of the pitch as he looked at it.
Everyone went too – except Andrew Murnin, who stayed on the right and so was left one-on-one against Jordan Flynn. Reape was in the area too, ostensibly to discourage Rafferty from sending the ball that way but when the ball was in the air, he stayed out of it. Murnin is a beast under a high ball and when he beat Flynn to it, Armagh were away. They repeated the trick a little later, when Armagh were down to 14 with Niall Grimley’s black card and the same result came of it.
Rafferty varied his kick-outs through. Sometimes there was a set-play like the one to Murnin. Sometimes he went short to Connaire Mackin. And absolutely, sometimes he waved everyone over to one side and kicked the ball into the roulette wheel and took Armagh’s chances with what developed. Grimley, Murnin and Jarly Óg Burns held their own, but Mayo mined plenty of scoring chances from it too.
So Tally’s not being entirely disingenuous. There is definitely going to be an element of lottery around the kick-out, even for the teams who are best at tilting the odds in their favour. But kick-out strategies will evolve too. Teams will come up with ways to squeeze out some of the chaos that a lot of us are so enjoying.
Some of it will be about who wants it more. The best coaches will make sure plenty of it will be a little higher-minded than that.
